Fans of Australia’s ABC TV channel’s “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (that just started a new series) will doubtless have already seen Series 2 Episode 3 “A Foreign Field” (it aired yesterday, 21st February 2014).
But if you haven’t, and fancy a bit of meanwhile-in-1959 retro-stylee forensic crime-solving period action, and with a storyline clearly based on the Somerton Man cold case, then there may still be time to catch up with it online on ABC’s iview website – though sadly (as I quickly found out) only if you happen to be in Australia.
Anyway, my mystery informant (OK, OK, it’s actually Bob, thanks Bob!) tells me that the episode has a “handsome stranger dying in a Ballarat park“, as well as poetry from the great Australian poet A. D. Hope (whose “The Wandering Islands” (1955) had only just been published), “codes, and Russian spies in the mix“. Sounds like fun, shame I can’t see it myself! 🙁
Dr Blake isn’t really my thing, but it wasn’t bad at all. It was essentially the Somerton case transposed to Ballarat and no mention of a child. A nice twist/addition by the writer/s was making the dead guy a serial ladies man (which may have been the case with SM too).
Jestyn was a known associate of Clive J Anderson, a communist sympathiser in Adelaide. She had a ten year affair with him before finally leaving Prosper who lived alone until his death. Both were Jewish.
Qantessa – Was Jestyn jewish before she began her affair with Clive or did she convert?
I have found information that indicates that her aunt married a jew but nothing else that links her mother’s line to the jewish religion.
Q – Is Clive J in any way related to Jean Cameron Anderson?
I don’t think it is recorded which (if any) denomination Jessie Harkness adhered to as a child, but her brother Thomas (jr) was an Anglican i.e. he reported “CofE” when he joined the Army (service no. V215970). (Their father, Thomas senior, appears to have been raised as a Catholic. Ellen Harkness, nee Lee, Jessie and Thomas’s mother, appears to have been a member of the Church — she and Thomas senior were married by that denomination, at Johnston Memorial Congregational Church in Fremantle, WA. Such a marriage would have alienated Thomas from Catholicism, unless a reciprocal ceremony were held in a Catholic Church and the children were raised as Catholics.)
It sounds like Qantessa is suggesting some kind of innate link between Jews and communists. If that were true, Israel would be the most communist state of all (which is a laughable idea) and; the communist parties and leadership of the former USSR and its client states should have been dominated by their Jewish minorities (but they weren’t). There is no evidence that such things were even slightly true, although such myths fester on — perpetuated by neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist Nazi etc propaganda.
The only real implication of matrilineal descent for Jews is that that the children of Jewish mothers, even non-practising ones are held to be “automatically” Jews. Some ultra-orthodox Jewish communities do not accept converts, but anyone can convert to the mainstream forms of Judaism.
To be buried in the Jewish section of any cemetery — as Jessie was — usually requires good standing within one’s local Jewish community. It does not require one to have a Jewish spouse or parents.
Jessie Thomson therefore almost certainly officially converted to Judaism, some time after she married.
* That should have read “Ellen Harkness, nee Lee, Jessie and Thomas’s mother, appears to have been a member of the Congregational Church”
JEstyn stayed with prosper until his death.
Very unlikely and patently untrue as she had several affairs with prominent doctors from Parkside in addition to the one mentioned, and this was well known in the local Jewish community. In fact, so bad was Jessica’s reputation that her funeral director had to negotiate directly with the cemetery to have her interred in the Jewish section, where she lies next to one of her boyfriends. The local chevra kadisha wouldn’t lie her out either. Her long suffering husband she quickly incinerated and scattered in a creek bed nearby. He has a lovely tiny rock with a plaque on it to her giant macabre monument.
Well, despite all discussions, no one ever seems to have found her birth certificate. Given this, one can’t eliminate the possibility that she could have been born jewish.
Qantessa, I note that Jessica is buried next to Dr Albert Hefez, who seems to have been a psychiatrist, and may have practised at Parkside mental hospital. Was Dr Hefez the boyfriend you had in mind, or is it Abram Frishling? Or both?
I would think the wife, or wives, and the children would have been very upset by Jessie being interred next to their husbands/fathers?
Get a grip people. All the affairs / relationships you are suggesting that Yessikah had are pure speculation. Nothing else. Stick to the facts.
JEstyns real biological father was not Thomas Harkness although he appears on the birth certificate.
Smerdon, until now I assumed you were one of a handful of trolls deliberately muddying the waters in the interests of protecting the beleaguered names of Jessie and/or Prosper and their relatives. But lo and behold, here you are urging us to “stick to the facts”! My profoundest and most humble apologies. So, if you say that T. Harkness snr wasn’t really Jessie’s dad, it must be both true AND relevant to this case in some way. *Removes tongue from cheek.*
So what is your source/proof for that statement and why should anyone care?
I heard it from JEstyn many years ago.
Smerdon – Did she happen to mention anything about her biological mother?
[Swearing] lying [Swearing]
Indeed. That she was a good lady and mother.
Celestine : I love how any time that there is any positive truthful information relating to the character profile of JEstyn or her family , you are the first one to get angry . You should really get a grip on your emotions or it will eat your soul up in the end . 🙂
I wonder what business, aging and sickly Jess had going over to country Victoria to die; presuming of course, that Gerry’s interviews with her, a year or so earlier were in Adelaide. That being said, why then take her back there for her funeral if her only known relatives were living in other states. Q mentions a giant macabre statue over her Hebrew gravesite, which seems to go against normal practise for Jewish funeral rites; so what gives with our Jess; was she kosher or not?…
Where’s the mail on Vic? Unless I got my wires crossed I understood her to be buried at Centennial Park in Adelaide, which lists her ‘last abode’ as Hazelwood Park (in the Uppity East of Adelaide).
From my memory of Centennial Park ‘giant statue’ sounds unlikely, because IIRC Centennial Park has pretty strict rules on what sort of memorials are an aren’t appropriate (although as I think about it now, I might be mixing it up with Enfield) – certainly it’s a ‘modern’ cemetery in so far as most of it is grassed and natural-looking rather than concrete and marble….
Added to that, the burial plot is in ‘Jewish Orthodox’ section – and I’d imagine there are rules specific to different religious sections to avoid people causing offence to others….(details at centennialpark dot org)
Regarding a post from several years ago about being buried in the Jewish section requiring good standing in the Jewish Community….I’m not certain that’s true. Cemeteries are businesses and sell plots to people who come along with money and ask for them. The religious communities have little (or no) say in who can buy the plot – so if they ask for one in the Jewish section they would be given one (I’d imagine without even any checks on their religious heritage). AFAIK the only difference in the sections is that different sections may have different rules regarding monuments, headstones, memorials etc….
I can recall going to a Catholic funeral where the burial was in the Lutheran section of Centennial Park – and I can imagine other denominational crossovers like that.
Further to that, the plots can be purchased well in advance (eg when families want a group of plots together), and ultimately the person interred there is not necessarily the person the plot was originally planned for.
Horsham, Hamilton or Warnambool would not be too far off the mark; one of those old Vic. dairy towns. It may have come from Gerry’s book or one of those other ‘people connected with SM’ sites. She may have been on a bus outing for old folks and had a turn for all we know; so sounds fair enough to me.
That’s a fair old bus outing. Even on today’s roads the closest of them would be about 5hr from Adelaide….and I reckon that would be Horsham – which you’d get to via the South Eastern Freeway – but I think back then the SE Freeway would have been much different, basically connecting the Old Mount Barker Road/Old Princes Highway through to at least Murray Bridge – which would add considerable more time too…